Why can't the Hubble telescope view planets?

Question

We always see these amazing views of far off galaxies. Why can't we see every inch of any planet with it? I bet there is a simple answer...right?

Answer 1

The ability of the Hubble telescope to "magnify" an image isn't as good as you think. As with most telescopes, it's true power is its ability to gather lots of light. This allows it to see very faint objects. Also the lack of atmosphere in the way allows a much clearer picture. There are actually much larger and more powerful telescopes on earth. But light polution and the blurring effects of the atmosphere make it a lot harder to see faint objects and get a clear picture.

As others here have said, you can find pictures of many of the planets taken with the hubble with a quick web search.

Answer 2

Hubble can see planets, at least the ones in our own Solar System.

It can't see planets outside the solar system because, as a result of the vast distances to other stars, the angular separation on the sky of star and planet is so small that any reflected light from the planet is swamped by the light form the star, meaning it's nigh on impossible to view the planet as a separate body.

Bear in mind that the Hubble telescope has a primary mirror of only 2.4m. That's tiny compared to the 10m of the twin Kecks. Hubble's advantage is that it doesn't suffer from atmospheric disturbance.
I think that there has been a picture of what is thought to be an exoplanet taken - probably by the Kecks or the VLT (four 8m telescopes in Chile)

Answer 3

It can and does take pictures of the planets. See the source. They are really great pictures, but perhaps not as detailed as you might think. People get the idea that Hubble should be able to see the Apollo flags on the Moon and things like that, but it can't. It is not intuitively obvious, but if you do the math, trigonometry to find the angle subtended by these things and the optics to find the resolution of the telescope, you would know that the smallest thing Hubble could see on the Moon would be something like 300 feet wide, and on Mars at closest approach, 8 miles across.

Answer 4

there are some great views of the planets of the solar system taken with Hubble, which you'll find in minutes on the Web

as for planets in other galaxies (or outside of the solar system) they're just way too small to be seen. Remember that the sun's dimater is 109 times larger than that of the earth. So seen from the same distance, the disk of the sun in the sky is about 11'900 times larger than that of the earth. And, while stars emit light, planets do not, they at best reflect it.

That's why Hubble won't be able to see planets, at least directly.

Answer 5

Hi:

They used the Hubble telescope to view the planets in 1994 when Shoe-maker - levy comet ran into Jupiter they used the Hubble telescope to photograph the event The main reason they use it to view far off galaxies and not other stuff is that we have sent space probe the all the planets and that Hubble was design to see the distance reachs of outer space and that most astronomers want to see the the outer reaches of our solar system and beyond .

Answer 6

Yup. Its pretty much the same reason that you can't see planets - the magnification on Hubble isn't strong enough to see planets outside our solar system.

Hubble can see far off galaxies because a galaxy is a billion billion times bigger than a planet!

Hubble has taken pictures of the planets in our own solar system - the link below shows some images of mars taken in 2003.

Answer 7

I would also guess that Hubble cant see the far off planets as the light from the star which they are orbiting is too bright. As the planets dont emit light themselves (only lit from there stars and even if they did it wouldnt be as bright) the glare from the star would be the only thing visible. Although this can be used to find planets by looking for a 'wobble' in the stars movement caused by the gravitaional effect effect the planet has on its star. Can't remember the exact details however.

Answer 8

The planets are too small, too far away, and too close to their suns. Astronomers THINK that they may have inferred a few gas giants out there hidden in dust clouds.

Answer 9

The first guy is spot on.

Award him the 10 points!